Project notes by Arwen Donahue

In 1994, Joan Ringelheim, head of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's Department of Oral History, had the idea of starting an interview project on the postwar experiences of Holocaust survivors. I was fortunate to have joined the oral history staff soon after that, and so was intimately involved with the Museum's Post-Holocaust Interview Project from the time of its inception. The project was unique in its conception, and the interviews' contents were fascinating and illuminating. Most oral history interviews with survivors focus almost exclusively on experiences that took place from 1933 to 1945. This is understandable, but a survivor's life-as any person's-cannot be confined to an event in history. A life is always growing and changing, always open to interpretation, always defying definitions. By focusing on the present moment as well as recent years, Post-Holocaust Project interviewees had plenty of room to explore and reflect upon their lives as whole people, rather than being only “Holocaust survivors.”